The Internet, and particularly the World Wide Web, allows multimedia information to be globally disseminated. Web pages expressed in a hypertext markup language often integrate information expressed in natural language text with static images, audio and video presentations and information generated by executing identified programs. While widely used “search engines” provide the ability to search for desired information based on the textual content of Web pages, there is a need for improved methods and apparatus for indexing and searching the multimedia content which is incorporated into Web pages.